Through this review, I will take you on a journey through Codex Omega. If you want to know more details, check our interview with the Great Greek Septicflesh.

The album starts with Dante’s epic of the epics, “The Divine Comedy”, specifically Inferno. The track, ‘Dante’s Inferno‘ starts with a ringing tunes from strings and symphonic, it is then met with the guitars and drums. The atmosphere of the track is full of darkness and hatred that reflects the horror of the inferno; I felt that the flowing of the riffs reflects the different adventures that Dante’s made in hell.

‘3rd Testament‘ was one of the early released tracks from the album; heavy tunes, with epic blackened symphony, meet the expectation and the hunger of a real listener who wants to taste the absolute symphonic Metal mixture.

‘A Portrait of Headless Man’ is the one that people admire the most due to its music video. It is the first track where we touch the taste of the oriental sounds through it. Even, the symphonic combination with music is different. It is also the first track in the album that we hear the clean vocals take the shape of narration.

‘Martyr’; in my point of view, is one of the most wonderful tracks in the album. It carries a hybrid taste, reminds me a lot of Alexandria, and the cultural connection between Greece and the East, even the early tunes of the track reminds me of Greek music as Haris Alexiou’s music. The riffs of the track were really attractive and catchy, some parts of the track you indicate the impressive oriental catchy strings.

Enemy of the truth’; in general carries the same musical atmosphere in the dark, powerful, symphonic epic melodies. But, it also carries a greater thing; in the middle of the track you will have an instrumental interlude, where the instruments perform as actors in a play; each instrument has a certain move, just like an actor has a role to play on the stage. The outro of the track is the most outstanding outro in the album, the chorus acts epically just as the chorus mentioned in the classic Greek literature and in the Iliad.

The great ‘Dark Art‘ is the upcoming station, pure keys sounds followed with dooms tunes, and the sounds of the chorus will remind you a lot with the famous symphonies, I liked how the clean vocals of this track good intermingled with the symphony.

‘Our Church Under The Sea‘, one of the fastest tracks on the album, it is also closer to Blackened Death. Despite its aggressive mood, it carries clean parts as well. It is different from the other tracks because it has started directly without any acoustic or symphonic intros.

‘Faceless Queen‘ is the richest track in the album, we have a Blackened Death style opening with very gloomy growling, also there is a combination of clean and growling. The sounds of the string instruments used to carry a rich taste of folk music. I can say that every song indicates Codex Omega is presented in ‘Faceless Queen’.

‘The Gospel of Fear’ is a piece of horror, we have complete symphonic interludes in the middle of the track.The intro of ‘Trinity’ is a very folk one, as mentioned above, the folk tunes are inspired by the folk Greek music. What’s very unique in this track is how different origins of string instruments combined together to create such a piece of musical beauty.

As symphonic parts composition is one of the main tools that identify the musical combination of Septicflesh, it gives its lovers and listeners three symphonic instrumental tracks; ‘Martyr of the Truth’, ‘Dark Statement’, and an orchestral version of ‘Portrait of a Headless Man’.

Septicflesh did it again, and they delivered a piece that is so close to perfection. They managed to give what the listener hoped for; folk tunes, aggressive powerful riffs, impressive symphonic taste, great vocals, catchy guitars and drums sounds, and rich melodic music.

Even the music production processes are great. The elements of perfection and uniqueness are gathered to create Codex Omega, which I rate 9.5/10.

Finally, I want to add two points, I liked how the tracks were organized; you can indicate how the first three tracks are the keys of the album; you can feel how the riffs and the melodies of the early three tracks impact on the others.

Secondly, I appreciate a lot what Krimh added to the band, as being the drummer after Fotis Benardo set high expectations for him to achieve. Kirmh did a great job in writing such drums lines. HATS OFF.

Edited By: Nehal A. Ali.

“Christos Antoniou” destroyed expectations when with the album’s marvelous orchestration; each track has its own feel and sound. From the dramatic moments in the middle of the tracks to the lead guitar and violin duets. Then there are the bonus orchestral pieces, I’m not that good at judging classical music as I don’t listen to it that often (even though I love it) but these tracks just blew me away, each track was full of emotion and said a story of its own.

Now to the band’s music; I have to say that I loved it, the guitars were given an extra blackened sound that classifying this album as blackened symphonic death metal won’t be completely wrong but it wouldn’t be exactly practical. The guitars sound extra distorted most of the time in order to achieve that sound and the bass lines were out of this world, and unlike most death metal bands, I can actually hear the bass in the mix! The drums were extremely fitting and insanely fast when needed as “Fotis Benardo”, Septicflesh‘s previous drummer made sure his pedals were as smooth and as fast as possible to unleash his full potential, and the tone was perfectly fitting. The vocals were as great as always, with “Sotiris Vayenas” giving his beautiful clean vocals and “Spiros ‘Seth’ Antoniou” with his death growls set to 11.

The album has 10 tracks with 5 bonus tracks for the deluxe edition. The 5 bonus tracks are the orchestral pieces mentioned above, here’s the track list:

1. War in Heaven
2.Burn
3.Order of Dracul
4.Prototype
5.Dogma
6.Prometheus
7.Titan
8.Confessions of a Serial Killer
9.Ground Zero
10. The First Immortal

Bonus tracks:

11.Dogma of Prometheus (Orchestral)
12.A prototype in Heaven (Orchestral)
13.The first immortal (Orchestral)
14.Order of a Serial Killer (Orchestral)
15.The Burning (Orchestral)

My overall opinion has to be that this is a really solid album and my favorite of 2014 with Behemoth‘s The Satanist coming really close. My only complaint has to be with the mixing as the vocals are sometimes too low in the mix and I can’t hear the lyrics. Other than that it’s a great album and is one of my all time favorites. Even one of the album’s artworks is my phone’s background.

Edited by: NJ Bakr